'The Following' recap: Ryan fails to rescue Joey...again

This week’s episode of “The Following,” proved to be as fast-paced and exciting as weeks past, but nothing ends up being resolved by its end.

It opens where it left off, with Paul holding a gun to Ryan’s head just as he is about to finally rescue Joey from the farmhouse.

Meanwhile, Claire, who thought she was going to be taken to Joey (yeah, right), actually gets locked into a creepy warehouse with one of Joe Carroll’s followers. As if she isn’t already freaked out enough, one of the bad guy’s folders falls on the ground, spilling its contents—dozens and dozens of photos of Claire.

He tells Claire he is “her follower.”

When she asks what the heck that means, Joe’s henchman proves to be even weirder, revealing a large stack of notebooks that detail what Claire has done every moment of every day for the past two years. He tells her “it is important for Joe” to see what she is up to while he is in prison.

Claire also discovers that it was never the plan for her to be reunited with Joey. Shocker.

At the prison, the serial killer himself has just revealed to his clearly horrified attorney, Olivia, that her statement to the press triggered the plan the led to Claire’s abduction.

“And now it’s time for the next part of the story,” Joe says grinning.

At the farmhouse, Emma, Jacob and Paul have tied up Ryan and are torturing him by using an electric current to throw off his pacemaker.

Emma forces Ryan to call the FBI to tell them to back off from the premises. During the call, Ryan is able to reveal that the missing girl, Meghan, is there, and Joey is safe and sleeping upstairs.

In a moment of chaos, Ryan secretly grabs a knife to untie the rope binding his wrists together. He escapes and is able to free Meghan, too, but realizes that Emma has whisked Joey away into the woods.

Emma and Joey encounter a pair of cops outside and we think FINALLY Joey is going to be safe, but nope! One of the cops is another one of Joe’s followers. The cop shoots her partner and gives Emma a getaway car.

Ryan arrives on the scene and kills the cop, but, clearly hurting from the torture, isn’t able to rescue Joey in time and the car speeds away.

Claire ends up being saved from the warehouse by a SWAT team, but her captor escapes and she soon finds out that Ryan, again, failed to rescue Joey. She is devastated.

The show closes with Olivia telling a pleased Joe that Emma successfully escaped with Joey. We hear Olivia giving another press conference about “numerous incidents of abuse” that Joe has endured from the FBI while in prison. He is clearly planning his next move.

In a very unsatisfying ending, we’re left with Joey still in captivity, several bad guys still on the loose, and a very broken relationship between Claire and Ryan.